MCC-GE 2153 Media Activism: “Liberation Lab London: A Transnational Intensive”

January 3-17, 2017.

How do we undertake visual activism in difficult times? Liberation Lab connects transnational political projects in alternative learning like Free University and Anti-University with anti-racist Atlantic world politics and visual activist practice. We’ll visit key alternative archive spaces in London like May Day Rooms, the Stuart Hall Memorial Library and the London Metropolitan Archive. We’ll meet with activists and artists to discuss how anti-racism and non-hierarchical learning are being thought and worked. We’ll walk through the city to see how gentrification is rewriting space and overwriting histories. And we’ll make sure to get outside the London “bubble” to see other parts of England. The academic goal is to learn methods and assemble materials that might be used for articles or theses. The fundamental purpose is to change your world view.

This “intensive” (meaning that we meet every day and we do work in the time, not just lecture) has requirements of attendance, participation, archive research responses and final report-back.

London has just become a more affordable destination, thanks to the odd decision to leave the European Union causing the pound to crash against the dollar. Students get discounts everywhere and national museums are free. Theatre stand-by tickets are cheap—really!—and London eating is so much better than the dire English “food” of legend because of great ethnic restaurants and takeout that is very affordable.

Provisional agenda:

  1. Welcome. Viewing and discussion The Stuart Hall Project
  2. Visit Autograph/Stuart Hall Memorial Library (closed Mon-Tues). Preliminary research: and
  3. Studio visits at Middlesex University TBC
  4. Visit to Turner Contemporary, Margate: see John Akomfrah “The Vertigo Sea” and walkabout in Margate, Kent.

Weekend January 7-8

  1. Visit to Bishopsgate Institute Library. Plan your research:
  2. Guns to Goods: visit with Paul Haywood, organizer of art activist project in Manchester
  3. Gentrification walking tour: East End
  4. MayDay Rooms:
  5. Panel event: Racism and Visual Culture in the UK

Weekend January 14-15

  1. Discussion with activists from Anti-University ( Preparation: PDF: The Anti-University (London)/Free University (New York).
  2. Group report backs on research projects.